London-based Supercritical, a software platform that helps businesses reach carbon net zero and tackle the climate crisis, announced on Thursday that it has raised $13M (approximately €11.81M) in a Series A round of funding.
The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The round also includes funding from RTP Global, Greencode Ventures, MMC Ventures, and others.
Paul Murphy, Partner at Lightspeed, says, “Supercritical is doing something unique. By focusing exclusively on carbon removal offsets, they are helping businesses invest in the places that will actually deliver climate impact while they work in parallel to decarbonise.”
“By aggregating demand, including through innovative future-proofing models, they are providing the resources that Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) projects need to scale in time.”
“Net zero is simply unattainable for the vast majority of corporations without a robust, quality carbon removal platform like Supercritical. We are so pleased to be part of their journey,” adds Murphy.
Why do we need to remove CO2?
The Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) capacity is well below the required amount. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scaled-up CDR will be necessary to keep world average temperature increases under 1.5 °C.
Around 600,000 tonnes of CDR were acquired in total in 2022, which is less than 0.01 per cent of the 10 gigatonnes the IPCC estimates would be required annually by 2050.
According to a statement, the CDR market is evolving: 237 tonnes of CDR offsets had been sold overall at the beginning of 2020, whereas individual corporations first made million-tonne CDR acquisitions earlier this year.
To avert a climatic catastrophe, development must pick up speed much more quickly in the years to come.
This is where Supercritical comes into play.
Supercritical’s solution
The company claims to be the only one that specialises in high-quality, vetted, durable CDR projects. These projects include both engineered solutions such as biochar, direct air capture (DAC) and enhanced weathering, and nature-based solutions such as afforestation.
Only 6 per cent of CDR projects available on the market are accepted after being vetted by Supercritical.
Supercritical says it is serving as a market maker and assisting CDR initiatives in growing by collecting demand from corporate purchasers. To kickstart rapid CDR capacity expansion, it is also leading new purchasing arrangements.
In May, the company facilitated a long-term offtake agreement for the biochar supplier Carbo Culture, allowing for the pre-purchase of thousands of tonnes of biochar as well as the development of C1, a new facility that allows for the first commercial-scale production of biochar from carbon-containing biomass.
Businesses can achieve net zero carbon emissions thanks to Supercritical measures, which cut and eliminate them utilising CDR techniques.
Supercritical claims to be one of the world’s largest carbon removal marketplaces with the platform accounting for 35 per cent of corporate purchases and two of the world’s top 20 CDR purchasers.
The company’s clients include Tide, who this year became the first fintech to remove 100 per cent of their emissions; and trading firm XTX Markets who have become one of the top 10 purchasers of CDR globally. Clients also include Veriff, Multiverse and IMC, among others.
Capital utilisation
Supercritical says it will use the funds to expand its workforce, increase its product offering, and acquire new clients.
Co-founder Michelle You says, “With this funding, we are excited to enter a new chapter and play a meaningful role as a market maker for promising carbon removal projects, aggregating demand to support them as they scale.”
“We have a vanishingly tiny window to start the acceleration curve towards the 10 billion tonne annual CDR capacity required by 2050, and we are proud to play an early market-leading role in helping this industry scale,” adds You.
Reach net zero with carbon removal
According to Supercritical, businesses intend to minimise their carbon emissions, but the majority of them will never be able to completely attain net zero through decarbonisation alone and will instead need carbon removal.
Founded by Michelle You and Aaron Randall, Supercritical’s marketplace enables businesses to buy fully qualified carbon removal credits, as specified in the sector-standard Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), that enable them to reach net zero.
You says, “Carbon removal – in parallel with aggressive decarbonisation – is required to stay below 1.5 °C of warming and avoid the worst effects of climate change.”
“We’re proud to work with businesses that are taking a leading role in building sustainability programmes that centre around both reducing emissions and removing with durable carbon removal, the only type of offset that counts towards net zero.”
“As the only marketplace exclusively focusing on high-quality carbon removal, it’s our mission to act as a trusted partner to businesses serious about net zero,” adds You.
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